Inside The Nudge Unit The Behavioural Insights Team

UK Government data shows that the great majority of people are concerned about climate and supportive of Net Zero by 2050.
However new research in BIT's new report 'How to build a Net Zero society' finds that most people find it hard to make more sustainable choices in their own lives, despite 9 in 10 wanting to do so. They want to see strong leadership from government and business to make green choices easier. 
Moreover, these high levels of public support aren't just in the abstract - there are big majorities in favour of a whole host of specific policy recommendations, including many often deemed more controversial.
For example 60% support frequent flyer levies, 74% higher prices on unsustainable consumer goods, 76% pedestrianised town centres, and 53% a carbon tax on meat.
The public are more enthusiastic still for a range of supportive policies such as interest-free loans for home improvements (88%), eco-labels on products (83%) and a simplified recycling (93%) system. People are up for getting Net Zero and are willing to do their bit and they are clamouring for help from government and business.
This episode of Inside The Nudge Unit features BIT's Head of Sustainability Toby Park and Andrew Schein and Izzy Brennan from the team discussing how to close this gap between public appetite and available opionts. There are lots of actions and policies that can be implemented that are backed by compelling evidence but too often the sustainable choice is hard, very hard, or completely opaque.
Listen to Toby, Andrew and Izzy as they explore how to remove these barriers and frictions so that instead it's the sustainable choices are the ones that are clear and easy.
More information:
The report 'How to build a Net Zero society' including the new research from the team discussed in this episode is available to download at: https://www.bi.team/publication/how-to-build-a-net-zero-society
 
Inside The Nudge Unit is a production of the Behavioural Insights Team
 
Editing and sound design is by Andy Hetherington of Studio Gibbon: https://www.facebook.com/thestudiogibbon/
 
Producer is Rich O’Brien
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4

Embedding behavioural science into your organisation

Inside The Nudge Unit is a podcast from The Behavioural Insights Team. Episode 12 looks at recent work from the team in the areas of road safety, online fraud, conflict resolution and synthetic data.
Over the past decade, car crash death rates in the US for pedestrians rose by 36%, even as death rates fell for drivers and passengers. Over a third of San Francisco’s traffic deaths are caused when drivers make left turns and don't see the person in the crosswalk. 
BIT’s Lis Costa is joined by Maximillian Kroner from our US office to discuss a pilot study conducted by BIT on the roads of San Francisco that reduced average speeds of cars approaching potentially dangerous turns by 17%. 
If you’re not familiar with the concept of synthetic data you are not alone but its potential in the fields of behavioural science and policy research is considerable. BIT’s Head of Data Science and Technology Dr Paul Calcraft spoke to BIT’s Aisling Colclough to explain more.
Boko Haram in Nigeria has been conducting a violent campaign against the authorities for many years but increasingly members are turning away from the militant group, expressing remorse and asking to rejoin the society they were previously terrorising. BIT’s Dr Antonio Silva talks about the work the team have been doing to help with this reconciliation and reintegration challenge.
Finally this episode of Inside The Nudge Unit features a project from BIT France looking at how to help protect people from the ever present risk of online fraud. This project was run with and financed by the DITP - France’s Département for Public Transformation. Tom McMinigal from BIT France speaks to BIT’s Andrew Schein about his experience pretending to sell coffee machines through a fake online scam to help teach people how to avoid the actual ones. 
More information can be found on our website www.bi.team:
Road safety: https://www.bi.team/blogs/dangerous-left-turns-slow-by-17-in-traffic-study-leveraging-behavioral-science/
Synthetic data: https://www.bi.team/blogs/accelerating-public-policy-research-with-easier-safer-synthetic-data/
Peacebuilding: https://www.bi.team/blogs/can-mass-media-reduce-violent-conflict/
Online fraud: https://www.modernisation.gouv.fr/publications/comment-mieux-proteger-le-consommateur-des-fraudes-lachat-en-ligne-la-ditp-mobilise
 
Inside The Nudge Unit is a production of the Behavioural Insights Team
Editing and sound design is by Andy Hetherington of Studio Gibbon: https://www.facebook.com/thestudiogibbon/
Producer is Rich O’Brien
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4

In the second of a two-part climate change special, BIT’s Head of Energy & Sustainability, Toby Park, sits down with Cambridge University’s Professor Theresa Marteau, Moira Nicolson from the Cabinet Office and Valentine Quinio from the Centre for Cities to unpick three of the biggest areas we need to decarbonise to reach Net Zero by 2050: Food, Transport and Energy.
We know we cannot achieve Net Zero without behaviour change - the question is, how we can make it happen and devise effective solutions to decarbonise the way we produce and eat food, the way we travel and the way we heat and power our homes. 
Our guests discuss the barriers that prevent us from eating more sustainably, uptaking public transport and electric vehicles and switching to green energy suppliers; and the potential levers we can use to change the behaviours of individuals, corporations and governments.
Credits:
Production and editing by Andy Hetherington
Music by Rich O’Brien
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4

In the first of a two-part climate change special, BIT’s Lis Costa sits down with Nobel Prize Winner Professor Richard Thaler, Cambridge University’s Lucia A. Reisch and BIT CEO and founder Professor David Halpern to answer one big question ahead of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference: Can we Nudge to Net Zero?
According to the Paris Agreement’s: Sixth Carbon Budget, in order to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, a 63% reduction in future emissions is required over the next decade or so. This is no mean feat! Such reductions will require substantial changes to our behaviour including the adoption of new technologies such as eco-friendly heating systems, and the reduction of our reliance on high carbon-footprint transportation systems such as flights and diesel cars.
Our guests discuss how this behaviour change can be achieved; the psychological biases and barriers that stand in our way; and the role that corporations and government must play to make climate-friendly behaviours tenable. 
So, can we Nudge to Net Zero? Listen to find out!
 
Credits:
Production and editing by Andy Hetherington
Music by Rich O’Brien
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4

On Christmas Eve December 2020, the World Health Organisation named Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) and health inequities as 2 of the 10 global health threats to track in 2021. In 2019, we worked with the Health Quality and Safety Commission (HQSC) and PHARMAC to see how we can tackle both in Aotearoa New Zealand. The results of this work have just been published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, so we wanted to dedicate this episode of Inside the Nudge Unit to it. 
Peer-reviewed articles allow us to present the rigorous work that goes into running a Behavioural Insights (BI) project. However, journal articles often remove the work from its broader context and leave little space for describing the tribulations that go into running BI trials. In this episode, we cover the story of how the trial developed, and how it built on our earlier work in the UK and the work done by the Behavioural Economics Research Team in the Australian Department of Health (BERT) and the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian government (BETA). 
We discuss how health inequities in Aotearoa New Zealand meant that we couldn’t just copy the letters used in the UK and Australia, and take a quick detour into the replication crisis. You’ll hear from Michael Hallsworth, who led the work in the UK, Janice Wilson, the CEO of the HQSC, Rawiri Jansen, a GP and member of the project's working group, and Nathan Chapell, who developed the letters we used in the project. 
Further reading
If you would like to read more about health inequities in New Zealand, you can read the paper mentioned by Rawiri Jansen here, as well as its follow up here. You can also read about the follow up to the UK study here, and the follow up to the Australian study here. 
If you are interested in learning more about the replication crisis, we would recommend this article. And if you would like to learn more about issues related to generalising studies from one area to another, we recommend you read this. Chapter 5 of Behavioral Insights, which was co authored by Michael Hallsworth (along with Elspeth Kirkman) also gives an overview of the issues discussed. 
Thanks to the large team of people who were involved in the project, especially Janice Wilson, Catherine Gerard, Richard Hamblin, Carl Shuker, Janet Mackay, Rawiri McKree Jansen, Richard Medlicott, Aniva Lawrence, Sally Roberts, Jan White and Leanne Te Karu. 
Music by Rich O’Brien https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=e9e2193372664b6b
Production by Alex Gyani. 
Editing by Pixelife Studios.